Practical War
by Vash The Humanoid Sunshower
Summary: Heero and Duo engage in a practical joke war while hiding out at a boarding school. Vaguely shonen-ai. "'Heero, did you short-sheet my bed' Just asking the question out loud made me start laughing. Heero Yuy?"


Notes: I wrote this for the Moments of Rapture 2010 Contest. It's vaguely shonen-ai.

Pairings: Duo/Heero

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, just playing with the characters for a while.

Heero Yuy sleeps like a stone for six and a half hours every night. I know this because we shared a room for two weeks at this exclusive boarding school on Earth. Every night at 10:55pm, Heero would sit down on his bed, lean his back against the wall, pillow between his knees and chest to hide the gun. He'd close his eyes and until 5:05am or so he was a statue in spandex shorts. He'd probably have woken up for gunfire. Or a mobile suit attack, or if someone tried to kill him. But the normal creaks and squeaks of an old building, the guys playing basketball in the room below us, the damned crickets, the jackass sneaking out the window at 4:00am to meet his girlfriend, all the stuff had me up and down all night, it never moved him.

The first night, I waved my hand front his nose, just to see if he'd try and break it, but the perfect sleeper didn't budge. The rise and fall of his chest was all that let me know he was alive.

Truth be told, it wasn't that much different from his being awake.

So I pushed it. Between the boredom and the lack of sleep, I needed to do something to keep myself sharp. Second night, after skimming through the Trigonometry textbook, I tiptoed over to Heero and made faces at him. Third night, I finished Chemistry and then checked him for input ports as thoroughly as I could without touching him. I had a bet going in my head with Quatre as to whether or not Heero was an android. After my inspection, the jury was still out.

After that, I got more daring. I tickled his feet. I sang some spirituals the sisters had taught me before the church burned. I sang louder and louder, until one of the guys next door pounded on the wall and screamed at me to shut the hell up. The night after that, I rouged Heero's cheeks and painted dirty limericks on his forehead in hot pink lipliner. I made sure to be out of the room before he woke up for that one, but I did hang a hand mirror on the door. I'm not a total asshole.

The day after the limericks, Heero glared at me all the way through first period. Not that it was much different from his usual expression. His forehead still had a light blush to it. I grinned back at him. He nodded and typed something into his laptop.

"How are you feeling?" I asked him over lunch. "You look flushed."

"Hnn."

That night, I avoided him by playing pool with some of the guys in the rec room. There's a thick, dark line between bored and suicidal. I got back well past 11.

"Howdy Heero." I waved to my stone sleep roommate. When he didn't move, I added, "Is that a gun or are you just happy to see me?"

Silence.

I talked at him as I combed and braided my hair. "You know how hard it was to let those guys win? That guy Manuel couldn't hit a shot in the corner pocket if he carried the ball in both hands." I talked about our English class, the only interesting one of the lot, and then rambled on about space, because its brutal beauty and coldness reminded me of Heero in the same way deserts and maple made me think of Quatre.

Then I got into bed. Or tried to. I lifted the blanket and extended my legs, but my feet got stuck halfway down. Someone had short-sheeted my bed.

I looked over at the my roommate.

"Heero, did you short-sheet my bed?" Just asking the question out loud made me start laughing. Heero Yuy? That was about as likely as Treize Kushrenada quitting war and going into food service. I couldn't stop laughing, not even when the guy next door pounded on our wall.

When my eyes started to tear up, I made myself calm down and put the bed back together. It was by far the best short-sheeting I'd ever seen. I dismantled it with a growing respect that bordered on awe. The corners were crisp and perfect. Not a hint of the change was visible above the blanket. There were even pins, placed at exactly 90 degree angles. In short, it was a perfect prank.

I glanced back at Heero again. I couldn't imagine anyone else doing it better. Except maybe me.

But why? Wrong question. Would anyone else in the school been brave enough to try this with Heero in the room?

When you've first eliminated the impossible, as Holmes said.

I borrowed a razor from the one of the adults on our floor, went back to Heero, climbed onto the bed, put my palms to the wall on either side of his head and said, "It's on."

Then I shaved off his left eyebrow.

The next day, Heero wore a grey skullcap to class. He pulled it down almost to his eyelids. Our homeroom teacher asked Heero once to take it off, and Heero glared until the man found something else to do. That night, while I played pool with the guys, Heero spiked my cool-mint toothpaste with an industrial strength blue dye. I spent half the night trying to scrub it off, and the other half shrinking all of Heero's spandex in the dryer. I had to roll each pair of shorts three times before putting them back in his duffel so he wouldn't notice the change, but it was worth it to see him jump around the next morning trying to get them on.

"You can borrow a pair of my jeans," I told him blandly as threw the third pair of shorts across the room.

He growled something in Japanese under his breath, and I gave him my bluest grin.

We went back and forth like this for the next few days. He switched out the carefully mediocre version of my Trigonometry homework for the one where I'd fixed the questions so they actually made sense. I signed him up for musical theater tryouts. He did something to my sneakers that made it sound like I was farting every time I took a step. I coated his soap in clear nail polish. He hid a firecracker under the toilet seat. I soaked his hand in warm water overnight so he'd piss himself, then hired a stripping Teddy Bear to deliver him a bag of Depends. It was almost civilized, like one of those fencing matches that rich people use in movies to solve problems. I got him while he was sleeping. He got me while I was hiding.

After the Depends, the other guys on our floor were pretty sure something was up.

Manuel asked me straight out, his hazel eyes narrowed beneath thick lashes, "What's going on with you and Yuy?"

"We're engaged in a practical joke war," I said. As Manuel collected his jaw, I added, "I intend to win it."

Manuel took a step back. "Uhh...yeah...right."

I took my smile down a notch so he'd stop trembling, and then gave him a casual wave.

Manuel didn't believe me. Just because you never lie doesn't mean that people actually believe you. I can't tell you how many OZ interrogators I've sat across from, pissed off and bleeding, and I've said, "I'm not going to lie, your handcuffs are shit, and you didn't bring enough guys to keep me in here for more than two hours. Sometime before then, I'm going to kill everyone within twenty five meters of me and walk out that door. So why don't you just let me go?" I rarely get a chance to do the second half of my truthspeaking, about how torture really doesn't get you good information as most people will just lie to stop the pain, because at some point between "I'm not going to lie," and "let me go," someone has backhanded me, or kicked me off the chair, or some other nonsense. It's all so pointless.

I even gave one guy the codes to my Deathscythe and the exact location where I'd left it before he'd had a chance to ask me anything, but he backhanded me anyway and called me impertinent. I had to look the word up after I'd broken his neck and gotten back to my Gundam.

So Manuel didn't believe me. In Manuel's defense, nobody would ever accuse Heero of having a sense of humor. Certainly not the type of humor that lent itself to long term practical jokes, not even me, until recently. It shows how wrapped up I was in our personal war that I didn't notice Manuel's disbelief at the time, or take into account the strength of his curiosity. Hell, maybe he was bored too. I'd had less than a year of formal education, but even before I got picked up by Dr. G, I knew the value of Pi wasn't "about 3." If the colonies really wanted to win this war, all we had to do was let these guys graduate and then they'd blow themselves away. It was pretty sad, actually.

Manuel started researching us. For a man that only had Google, a moderately stocked school library, and his own wits, he did a fair job of digging up circumstantial evidence. By the end of the day, there were two new rumors floating around the school about Heero and I. The first: we were really a pair of college age film students doing a secret documentary on drugs in boarding schools. The second: we were Gundam pilots.

After the third Stoner waylaid me in the hallway and begged me to take him out of our video, I realized Heero and I were in trouble. I'd put the priest's outfit in the suitcase for the duration of our hiding out, unlike Heero who rocked his spandex battlesuit everyday, but I made no secret of wearing my cross and that I found cigarettes disgusting, let alone hard drugs. And then there was Heero. You'd have to be high to think of inviting Heero Yuy to any kind of party. What with Heero's psychotic charm and my damn trigonometry homework-the teacher had already sent it to his university friend to verify my 'genius approach'-the second rumor was far more believable than the first. Even if it was true.

Between fifth and last period, Heero cornered me for a private conversation in the school's bathroom. Before I had a chance to check the place out, he pushed me up against the wall between two urinals, and whispered, "We have been compromised," in broken Navaho. Subtle as a block of C4, our Heero.

"What the hell are you saying?" I asked, holding my open hands out at my sides. "Geez, Yuy. We don't need to go all secret agent here just because people are talking about the movie." I emphasized 'movie'. In English. It wasn't a lie, not quite.

"Movie?" Heero hesitated. His grip on my chest eased a little.

I put my finger over his lips before he said something to make things worse.

At that point, the bathroom stall opposite me swung open and Manuel stumbled out, followed by two of the other pool players, Anton and Carlos.

"You two are fucking gay?" Manual ran an awkward hand through his light brown curls. "No shit!"

Anton said, "You told me they were Gundam Pilots?"

Manuel blushed. "Either that or film students," he said, wiping his hands on his pants.

I don't believe in God, not since the church burned, not before that even, but there's such a thing as good luck. So I grabbed Heero's shirt and kissed him hard. He was too poleaxed to respond, thank the God I don't believe in, and between the angle and his thick hair, the other boys wouldn't see his expression.

Carlos squeaked, "I've gotta go," and ran.

When we finished, Manuel and Anton just stared.

"You're pretty smart," I said to Manuel, "to have figured us out." Then I laughed. A lot.

"Listen man." Manuel waved open hands in front of him. "Uh...men, guys, we're really sorry about ruining your movie."

I said, "We really are Gundam Pilots."

"Uhh...right." Manuel backed away. "Anyway, good luck with the directing. I don't have anything against you being gay. I'm not gay but my cousin's gay. Good thing you have each other, right." He waved a stuttered victory fist a the air.

When Heero and I were alone in the bathroom again, I tapped his forehead. "You know our little contest?"

"Hnn..."

"I win."

Then Heero cradled my jaw and stuck his tongue in my mouth. I damn near passed out. He took a step back. "Not yet," he said, and left.

The End.


End file.
